How legendary aprés ski spot the Chammy survived 50 years of Tahoe droughts, development

Located in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, Le Chamois has served as a popular watering hole for skiers, snowboarders and locals alike.

Located in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, Le Chamois has served as a popular watering hole for skiers, snowboarders and locals alike.

Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate

Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate

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Located in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, Le Chamois has served as a popular watering hole for skiers, snowboarders and locals alike.

Located in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, Le Chamois has served as a popular watering hole for skiers, snowboarders and locals alike.

Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate

How legendary aprés ski spot the Chammy survived 50 years of Tahoe droughts, development

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Le Chamois isn’t just a bar.

It isn’t just a restaurant.

And it isn’t just one of the best aprés ski destinations in America.

It’s also a piece of the mountain, forged by generations of skiers and featuring extensive deposits of cheap beers, good times, and a whole heck of a lot of aprés memories.

The crown drinking jewel of Lake Tahoe’s Squaw Valley, the 50-year-old Chammy (as it’s affectionately referred to by, well, pretty much everyone) was originally opened in 1969 inside of what was once Squaw Valley Resort’s lodge. The lodge moved two buildings over in the '80s, the Chammy took over the two-story space filled with European chalet vibes, and since has changed ownership just twice, most recently from Rockne Rudolph in 2003 to Katja Dahl and Junior Wilson — co-owners of the Chammy for the past 17 years.

“This was our favorite aprés place,” says Dahl, who started dating Wilson in 1998 while both were working at Squaw — Dahl in PR and Wilson in ski rentals. “So we got to know (Rudolph) really well.”

As the story goes, a joke from Wilson offering to take the Chammy off Rudolph's hands in 2001, turned into an actual conversation about succession in 2003.

Dahl sits at the Chammy's upstairs Loft Bar just a couple feet away from the bar's namesake inspiration: a stuffed Chamois (which is sort of like a mountain goat). Originally, Le Chamois was supposed to be a high-end French restaurant ("they were going to do fondue and everything," Dahl says) before that was quickly scrapped and replaced with pizza and fine, American-made pilsners.

She recounts the speech Rudolph made to her and Wilson the day he handed over the keys.

“It was just sort of like, you know, 'This has been my life's work. I really respect this. I think you guys have the same intentions. You respect it for the same reasons I did,'” she says, goosebumps finding their way to every arm in her vicinity.

Virtually nothing has changed about the Chammy since that speech — sure they added an outdoor bar, and the carpet is new (thank God), but the spirit is still the same 100% unadulterated Chammy.

“It’s the Loft Bar Pub & Social Club," she says, referring to a sign in the stairwell. "We try to make it like your living room so you feel like you’re family. A lot of the same people are here all the time, it’s not like you walk in every year and there’s some new hired hand that just stepped off the bus.”

She's not kidding. Everyone who walks by during the interview has either worked here for most of their adult life (which makes sense when you find out the job comes with ski breaks as a perk) or grown up here and spent the entirety of their life coming to the Chammy. There's a photo on the wall of a group of 15-year-old boys hanging out in front of the building — Dahl points to it and says they all still hang out here, except they're all 45 now.

Le Chamois is as much a museum of the mountain as it is a chalet bar.

Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate

There's a chair from the old KT-22 lift that's been securely hanging in the bar since the '90s.

There's a chair from the old KT-22 lift that's been securely...

There's a chair from the old KT-22 lift that's been securely hanging in the bar since the '90s.

Just above the bar are the skis Steve McKinney used to break the world speed record in 1974 (fun fact, McKinney was the first person ever to hang-glide off Mount Everest).

There's also Olympic gold medalist Jonny Moseley's outlaws from one of his World Cups wins, and a handful of racing bibs including one for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City ("it has to be a real bib, it can’t be a 40th place bib," Dahl explains).

There's a comically large beer glass trophy won at a World Cup event by Daron Rahlves, who's both one of Wilson's best friends and a member of the U.S.'s 2010 Olympic team ("We pass it around the bar from time to time, it’s got a couple chips in it," Dahl says).

There's a miniature version of a ski lift that runs from the bar to a rafter, there's a framed movie poster of raunchy '80s skiing movie "Hot Dog" (which actually filmed scenes at the Chammy), and there's a LIFE magazine clipping of 2009 sideburn/mutton chop world champion Toot Joslin, who's enough of a regular that he has his name fancily engraved on one of the bar stools.

(You can check out photos of everything in the slideshow at the top of the story)

If you've ever done anything of note in the this town (or even just spent your winter kicking back beers at the Chammy), there's a better than good chance that there's some sort of commemoration of it on these walls.

And that's one of the reasons why, when Squaw Valley was bought by high-end resort conglomerate KSL in 2010, it was only a matter of days before the entire village was covered in "Save the Chammy" stickers.

And sure enough, when a miniature model of KSL's grand plans for development was finally presented to Dahl and company, tucked behind a host of towering new buildings was a tiny scale model of Le Chamois, completely untouched.

With the Chammy open every year from December to April-ish, Dahl and Wilson spend their off months running an excavation business they've owned since 2000. “That’s actually how we make a living,” she says. It's also how they survived recent drought years and even the Great Recession.

“It is a lot of work, the restaurant business is not for the faint of heart, but I really love this place,” Dahl says, scanning the bar, taking stock of Rudolph — and now her — life's work. "I mean theoretically, you know, you kind of run out of steam at some point to keep the magic going. This is a Herculean effort to keep it up. But like I said, we get so much support from the community and so much positivity and laughter and joy from our customers that on those tough days..."

Dahl pauses, her eyes welling up as if she's gone directly to one of those tough days in her mind.

"On those tough days, you know, somebody will show up and say something, and I'm like, okay, that's why I'm doing it."